Crazy People Run This Parliament (Tallinn, Estonia)

When countries enforce a conscription act to force their “free” citizens into military service, understandably people will go to extreme lengths to avoid it. Some will pursue intense studies to disqualify their candidacy; others will call in favors from their powerful uncles; hell, even some Americans fled to Canada during the Vietnam war so as to not be sent to damnation.

In Estonia it was no different. Actually there was more incentive to escape conscription since they were under Soviet occupation. So what would people do, they would act crazy. I’m sure some just had to lay it on a little thicker. But that was the preferred method: play a Looney-Tune, or whatever Soviet cartoon of the day they were forcing on the population.

That walking tour I went on – the guide shared this anecdote.

A guy went around with his index finger compressed like he was squeezing a trigger of a gun. He proclaimed it was stuck that way. The doctors were baffled. He was one appointment away from being discharged of any required military service when the doctor asked him a simple enough question, “What did your finger look like before?” The man answered, “Like this,” and straightened out his finger.

So when the wall fell and the Soviets curtailed out of Eastern Europe, (and the West pretended they never abandoned them,) many Estonians came out of the woodwork. And by woodwork, I mean the psychoward. Many would become part of the next government

To think that a percentage of Estonian politicians spent time in a mental institution – at face value – doesn’t seem that strange. Governments all over the world are crazed, hypocritical, lunatics, and in Estonia at least they had treatment.